Russia must be held accountable for its war

Bartosz Cichocki presenting his ambassadoral credentials to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Photo: Presidential Administration of Ukraine / wikimedia.org

ANDRII KUTSYK AND KATERYNA KYRYCHENKO: You were one of the few diplomats who stayed in the country when the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine started on February 24th 2022. Was it your personal decision? Or was it the decision of the president and the Polish government?

BARTOSZ CICHOCKI: The Polish President Andrzej Duda visited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on February 23rd 2022. Duda told Zelenskyy that Poland will stay with Ukraine side by side. For me, this meant that I had to be physically in Ukraine. I do not judge my colleagues who left, but an ambassador is sent to represent his country to the government of another country. If the government of Ukraine and the president of Ukraine remained in Kyiv, it was clear to me that I had to be in Kyiv as well. It was my personal decision. On the other hand, if I had said that I did not feel safe there and wanted to leave, I think Warsaw would have said, “Okay, go.” But this did not happen.

Do you remember your emotions after the invasion began? Was it fear? Was it anger? Or maybe something else?

I was scared before the invasion, because I did not understand how it would go. Some were speculating there would be a limited invasion, some were saying it would be full-scale. That said, there was a certain lack of transparency, unpredictability of the situation. But when it all started, we were already prepared. We have been preparing for this since October 2021. We put in order the documents, the equipment, as well as food and water supplies. We had already planned evacuation routes and prepared vehicles, counted people. As one of the first steps, a week and a half before the invasion we sent our women and children away to Poland. I mean, when the invasion started, I felt a kind of relief that it had started. The situation had eventually become clear – we were moving into a crisis mode. And we acted in this situation step by step. At first, there were difficulties, because we have been 20 in the embassy, and it quickly became evident that we would not last long taking into account our limited supplies. All shops closed down, rockets and bombs started flying. Within a week, we sent most of our people away from Kyiv in several convoys. And then there were only three of us in the embassy in Kyiv, and even then, we were thinking about what we had to do, not about how and when it would end, because that would have driven us crazy. We couldn’t think about whether we would be killed or not then. We had no control over that. We could only control whether we had water, fuel, a car, a phone, the Internet.

You were one of the first people to visit Bucha and see the war crimes committed by the Russians. Do you think that Polish society knows enough about the atrocities committed by the Russians in Ukraine and whether the Polish side is cooperating with the Ukrainian side in the context of investigating these crimes and establishing a tribunal for the military and political leadership of Russia?

I first went to Bucha when there were already no Russians in the Kyiv region. The President of Poland Andrzej Duda arrived, then the Marshal of the Senate arrived. We went with President Duda to Borodianka, and with the Marshal of the Senate to Bucha. I saw these mass graves, these destroyed buildings. Poles have no doubt that Russians are committing grave atrocities and war crimes. There is a Russian state policy of changing the DNA of the Ukrainian nation. Children are being deported, women are being raped, and even soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are being castrated. I don’t think anyone in Poland questions this. But the investigation of these crimes requires very professional prosecutorial work. My colleague, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andrii Kostin, is cooperating on this issue with the Polish Ministers of Justice. War in itself is bad, even catastrophic. But even in war, one can either somehow still respect principles of warfare, or one can wage war without any respect for the rules. Residents of the occupied territories also have their rights, yet Russia is waging war without respecting any rights, any principles. And there must be accountability for this. 

Poland cooperates with Ukraine and helps Ukraine in investigating war crimes and bringing Russia to justice. Is this a question of Poland’s role in the establishment of Ukraine’s independence? Or is it more about Poland’s commitment to promoting international justice and countering international crimes?

Both. Ukraine is some kind of a romantic dream for Poland. For us, the Commonwealth we all lived in together is to some extent the lost “Atlantis”. And I think there is some kind of legend that everything used to be good when Poland and Ukraine were together, and now it is bad. For example, you see in Poland, even though things are terrible in Gaza, there are no such emotions attached compared to what is happening in Ukraine, because Gaza is far away, and Ukraine is close. We understand that if we forgive the Russians for their crimes and set a precedent, they may repeat similar crimes against Poles. During the Second World War, our children were deported to the Third Reich, and we also experienced Russification, during which terrible things happened. Poles were forced to move to what is now Central Asia. Thus, this is not a theoretical question. We fully understand what will happen if Ukraine fails to preserve itself and a war is started against Poland. So this position is both pragmatic and moral.

How do you see future relations between Ukraine and Poland in the context of regional security? After all, recently in Ukraine there have been a lot of vibrant discussions about Poland’s decision not to shoot down Russian drones over the territory of both western Ukraine and eastern Poland…

I understand that our Ukrainian colleagues are under great psychological pressure, as they have been fighting for their lives for three years. But it is incorrect to create a picture that shooting down drones in Ukraine’s airspace is Poland’s responsibility, or that, for example, Lviv is being destroyed because of Poland not shooting down missiles or drones over western Ukraine. I understand that Ukraine’s friends and partners could do more, but for some reason they don’t. And it’s absolutely not because they have ceased to support Ukraine. There might have been some decision-making mistakes and we need to talk about it, rather than publicly accuse Poland of deciding not to shoot down Russian targets. After all, how are we supposed to do this – technically? It is not Poland that makes this decision unilaterally. This decision should be made at the NATO level. If we decide to shoot down Russian targets in Ukrainian airspace on our own, military capabilities located in Poland will become a legitimate target for Russia.

Will it help Ukraine? I don’t think so. We are already providing unprecedented support to a non-NATO state, a non-member of the European Union. Never ever before have NATO states transferred as much hi-tech equipment and information intelligence to each other as they have been transferring to Ukraine. So publicly accusing Poland of not helping Ukraine enough does not work in Ukraine’s favour. And bringing this up into the public space, thinking that we can somehow be intimidated, is very naïve. When Germany is saying they will not hand over anything at all, when the United States is accusing President Zelenskyy of interfering in their election campaign, attacking the Poles at the same time… seems to be very short-sighted to me.

How do you estimate the status of current Polish-Ukrainian relations?

I believe that, unfortunately, we are currently in a difficult moment. And it didn’t even start with the protests of farmers and truck drivers. I think it started when a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile killed two Polish citizens, and we were publicly told that it was a Russian missile, but the Poles were afraid to admit it based on the US instructions. It was insulting. It was disrespectful to our president and our prime minister. And from that moment on, your confidence in us, our confidence in you began to worsen at the highest level. On the Polish side, we also made a mistake when we were asked about Solidarity Lanes (The “Solidarity Lanes” initiative refers to alternative transport routes set up by the European Union in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, aiming to help Ukraine export its agricultural products, particularly grain, amid the blockade of Black Sea ports. This initiative has been particularly significant in the context of Ukraine-Poland relations, as Poland has become a key transit country for Ukrainian goods – ed.). We opened our border without considering the reaction of the society. Polish society did not become anti-Ukrainian, but people felt the consequences of the Ukrainian grain sold massively on the Polish market – instead of being transited. I am sure that Ukrainian grain was not the main thing that caused the crisis. Here we should add the European Union’s climate policy, which is very unsuccessful in the sense it makes agricultural production much more expensive. The global grain market is flood with cheap Russian, Brazilian and other grain, which pushes the prices down. As a result farmers all over the EU started to protest. But many in Kyiv pictured the situation like only the Polish farmers were blocking the Ukrainian grain.

The fastest thing one can do when in a catastrophic situation, when one has no money for their family because of not being able to sell, is to block the border with Ukraine. The Germans blocked their minister. The Spanish blocked grain from Morocco. Kyiv suggested that if only our government wished to, the border would be unblocked. Like they didn’t realize that Poland is a big country, and if we started to disperse the farmers from the border, they would end up blocking Rzeszow airport or Okęcie. Would this have made things better for Ukraine? I don’t think so. We are not a dictatorship and those protests were completely legal, whatever we think of them.

But on the other hand, it is true that more could have been done. I remember Jadwiga Emilewicz, who was at the time the Morawiecki government’s Plenipotentiary for Polish-Ukrainian Development Cooperation, went to these farmers and drivers and talked to them. There were certain agreements reached that they would leave the border if we started doing something in the EU, if we guaranteed that the Ukrainian grain will transit through Poland and will not be sold in Poland. But then, unfortunately, big politics started in Poland – the elections. And everyone started counting votes. And it is clear that in an agrarian country like Poland, a farmer is a sacred cow, and no one will touch them. That said, moods of toxicity and distrust were growing. The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy also has the right to believe that some promises were not kept. After all, it was decided to impose an embargo within hours. This should not have happened because no one talked to Ukrainians about it beforehand. I’m not saying that this is a black and white situation, that we did everything right, and President Zelenskyy is to be blamed for everything – absolutely not. President Zelenskyy felt that he was treated with disrespect, that something was promised to him and was not fulfilled. 

It also seems to me that the new government in Poland is too focused on internal political affairs. Again, we had parliamentary elections, then local government elections, then elections to the European Parliament, and now we will have presidential elections. Thus, unfortunately, politicians are focused on keeping or gaining power and, unfortunately, not focused enough on the war in Ukraine. And this is a problem. It’s hard to find a politician in Poland who will be ready to take the risk and offer something constructive with regard to Ukraine. Somehow, this topic has become toxic. I am sure that the situation is the same on the Ukrainian side. Now we need to find some kind of constructive joint project. A good example of such an initiative is Prime Minister Tusk’s proposal that Poland help rebuild the destroyed buildings in Lviv. Let’s see if the Mayor of Lviv Andrii Sadovyi and his colleagues will allow us to rebuild something and if there are Polish companies that will agree to work under the risk of Russian missile attacks.

Yet, I wouldn’t say that current Polish-Ukrainian relations are in a critical state, because Poland still supports Ukraine, almost all aid goes through Poland, and Poland supports Ukraine on the EU and NATO platforms. If our relations were in crisis, everything would have worked otherwise.

An important aspect that we need to talk about is historical memory. How, when, and if at all can the complex issues of Polish-Ukrainian historical memory, in particular the Volhynia massacre, be resolved? Do you think the problem is solely of a political nature or is there more to it?

It certainly can be resolved. I think it is often being mistakenly called a historic problem [as in being important today]. I am convinced that it is not a historic problem at all, because what happened 80 years ago has already happened, and neither the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy nor the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Andrii Sybiha are responsible for it. Similarly, we are not responsible for those Poles who have killed Ukrainians in Sahryń or Pawłokoma. It happened, our grandfathers did it. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was not even a representative of the state of Ukraine at that time. This is not a question for current Ukraine to address. Yet, if current Ukraine does not give permission for exhumations, if we were de facto banned from screening the film Volhynia back in the days of the former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, if the Institute of National Memory of Ukraine violates bilateral commitments… This is obviously a nuance, but this topic is personally very close to me. A few years ago a bilateral forum of historians has been working on different stages of our relations and it was agreed then to publish the positions the participants presented: what Polish historians consider appropriate and what Ukrainian historians consider appropriate. We did that. Mr. Viatrovych said he had no money for publication or else, so it was not done. So how can we continue working in this way?

We had previously agreed that if there were any controversial things, we would put them on the forum and discuss them together. Then, it turns out that around September and October in 2017, Mr. Sheremeta, the Secretary of the Ukrainian State Interministerial Commission on Memoralization of Victims of War and Political Repressions, so to say, a civil servant, opened a quasi-cemetery in Veretskyi Pass for the Carpathian Sich POW-s who, as the memorial literally says, were shot by the Poles on March 18th 1939 – six hundred people in one day. This implies that there was some kind of war crime that no one told us about. They say that the Hungarians arrested 500 or 600 Ukrainians and allegedly handed them over to a Polish patrol, and that this patrol killed them all. Mr. Sheremeta did not discover the bodies. What was discovered was the testimonies of one person who is not the most trustworthy. And later on, when the cemetery is built, the vice prime minister at the time Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze is invited to the opening, and the honour guard of the Armed Forces of Ukraine opens the cemetery with the national anthem. This is, of course, up to Ukraine to do. But what can we talk about then, what forum of historians?

Say, some imaginary Mr. Petro somewhere in Chernivtsi believes that the Poles were killing people and the UPA were not, then this is his private matter. In Poland, there are also quite a few crazy people who believe that all Ukrainians are Banderites. But this is the personal opinion of an imaginary Mr. Piotr from Wrocław. But on the state level, public policy should be more responsible. There should be responsibility for ensuring that graves are not destroyed or that they are reconstructed – not only UPA soldiers’ graves. Clearly, there are problematic situations on our part as well, because of gaps in our legislation. For example, how to treat a grave with the body of a UPA soldier? Our legislation does not stipulate that this is a military grave. This is a nuance though that could have been easily fixed by legislators.

Another issue is that graves and memorials are treated in the same way by the Institute of National Memory of Ukraine (by Mr. Viatrovych at the time, and now Mr. Drobovych). Take the scandal with the triumph monument in Hruszowice, for example. It was not actually a grave, not one UPA member was buried there. It was a memorial to five or six “kurinis” (companies – ed.) of the UPA – glorification, so to say. According to Polish law, local administrations are responsible for such memorials. The government had addressed the head of the local administration requesting not to do anything and to allow Ukraine and Poland to work on resolving the issue together. However, residents of the hromada had been demanding that the local administration dismantle it for years. We asked Ukrainian colleagues to come do research to ensure there were graves of UPA soldiers there as they claimed and which would transfer the jurisdiction over the then grave – not a monument anymore. We were welcoming such research, Ukrainians did not seem to want to conduct it. Eventually, the head of the local administration dismantled the monument and the “avalanche” started.

All this can be resolved. But I am certain some statements by Mr. Drobovych do not help. Take his recent interview to Mr. Bobołowicz. It is a bit of a similar situation as with Poland not shooting down drones over Lviv, when the narrative is reversed to Poland allegedly vandalizing and ruining everything, yet imposing certain expectations on Ukrainians. In this situation, we do need brave politicians. Such as Ruslan Stefanchuk, for example, who came to the anniversary of the Volhynia massacre and bowed in front of the cross in Warsaw commemorating victims of the massacre, which says “genocide” on it. It is an extremely hard thing to do. I understand that it was a huge challenge for him. What will he say later at home? But he did it anyway. Maybe we need a little more people like Ruslan Stefanchuk.

There are currently around 20 exhumation requests awaiting Ukraine’s response. Obviously, the war is ongoing and the procedures are difficult to do now as they require the presence of both Ukrainian and Polish archaeologists at the site. I am also sure that Poland also needs to do more systematic work from our side, rather than to make loud statements – i.e. that we will not let Ukraine into the EU “with Bandera”. This creates a certain pretext that we would blackmail Ukraine, which will not be accepted by our colleagues in the European Union. I doubt the negotiating mandate within the accession process includes Bandera. And what exactly one means by Bandera? Such statements are vague and were dropped like a nuclear bomb. We need to deal with this topic consistently, not depending on a political statement or on the date of the anniversary of the massacre in July. This is our common cause, because if we put it off, it will be bad for both Ukraine and Poland.

It is evident to me that we are not able to reverse the process of the UPA’s glorification in Ukraine. According to Ukrainian law, it is up to local administrations to put up monuments to Bandera, Shukhevych, etc. For Poles, such local decisions resonate nationally. Yet, we have no influence on this. In Ukraine, as in Poland, monuments are in the competency of local administrations, whereas the decisions on graves are centralized.

Unfortunately, it seems more possible now to earn popularity in both Poland and Ukraine by criticizing Ukrainians in Poland and Poles in Ukraine respectively. Probably, we should wait for this moment to pass. For example, I do not understand the reason for the ban on the film Volhynia in Ukraine. This is not an anti-Ukrainian film. It is a film about the fact that under certain conditions any person can become not even an animal, but some kind of Satan. And there are both bad and good examples of both Ukrainians and Poles in the film. It would be great to allow the screening of this film in Ukraine, accompanied by a discussion allowing historians or youth to discuss it. It seems to me that from the Ukrainian side, the ban on the screening of the film Volhynia was a bad mistake. What is also needed is to increase opportunities for publications, conferences and other scientific work. The Russian aggression has basically created the conditions for Ukrainians and Poles to interact more, become closer and we should take advantage of it. Of course, it would have been better without the war. When I went to visit cemeteries in Ukraine on the anniversary of the Volhynia massacre, I met with community leaders. We talked about this issue openly. Everyone remembers what had happened and who did what. And no one is proud of it. Locally, people want to move forward and have nothing against the Polish cross being put up. There would not have been so many problems with this topic, if politicians and officials from both countries were not making various provocative statements. 

Summing up, I would say these are not historic problems but rather problems of the current legal and administrative decisions regarding the past.

Bartosz Cichocki is a Polish political scientist and historian, between 2019 and 2023 serving as the Polish ambassador to Ukraine.

Andrii Kutsyk is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Sciences University of Gdańsk and a visiting researcher in UMCS.

Kateryna Kyrychenko is a Legal Officer and Ukraine Program Manager at the pro bono law firm Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG) and is currently pursuing a PhD in International Law at the National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”.

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Andrzej Duda, diplomacy, Poland, Polish foreign policy, Polish-Ukrainian relations, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy